The Slow Way

We who believe in the one Breath can either spend our lives demanding it show up where we'd like for it to show up, or we can stand in the open air and let it blow when it pleases.

• Find Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song here.
• Find my previous Slow Way Letter inspired by Doyle's book of essays.
• Find more information on PROMPT speech therapy here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

We rarely get to finish, do we? Seventy percent. Good enough? Love and apologies and trying again. Hoping for grace to soften the edges of the thirty percent. What else can we do?

• Find Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

But sometimes prayer is the act of moving things around, recognizing what in our lives needs removing, and what in our lives needs transforming. The intricate system of our inner soil can be rich, or it can be lacking. And it can survive on its own for a while. But eventually, if we neglect it, the weeds spring up, the soil loses nutrients. Our lifeforce slumps.

• Padraig O'Tuama's new book of prayers, Being Here, is available for preorder. It will release in January.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

• Find Amber Haines' and Seth Haines' new collaborative book, The Deep Down Things here.
• Ivanka Demchuk's icon of young Mary receiving the angel can be found here.
• Click here to view Caravaggio's "The Incredulity of St. Thomas."
• And see his "Madonna and Child with St. Anne" here.
• Erin Lane writes extensively about the concept of "mothering" as a verb rather than a noun in her book Someone Other Than A Mother.
• Read Mary's song of liberation in Luke Chapter 1.
• If you're interested in learning more about prayer using icons, Henri Nouwen's book Behold the Beauty of the Lord is a great place to start.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

From Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey.

"We praise you, O Lord, for our limits!

limits you have given us for

our good and for your glory."

The subtitle of Blessed Are the Rest of Us is "How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole." I love that word "limits." Limits speaks to more than weakness, more than failure, more than the ache in us for justice. Our limits in the presence of the divine is part of the core of who we are. Limits, as the prayer says, are for our good.

• Find Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

How do we live, in all our moments, learning to emulate God's mercy? I can be frustrated with the world's lack of care, the intrinsic ableism in all of us that allows for casual complaints about kids and their need to get with the program of typical development. But, even in that hurt I am invited to curiosity and care. To be a mercy-emulator, to practice the way of Jesus.

To see the dignity and worth of every person I encounter, pausing in my frustration long enough to show interest in the real person, made in the image of God, longing for mercy.

Links:

• Find Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey here.
• Click here to read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

Ritual is part of our daily lives. Rituals are the ways we honor moments of significance. The special occasions that bring us into community with loved ones throughout the year. The carols we sing at Christmas, the blowing out of birthday candles, the first dance at a wedding, the pallbearers carrying the casket, the blessing of babies in our places of worship. We need rituals to make sense of the world.

And we need rituals to make room for the holy in our presence, to recognize that the holy is already among us.

Links:

• Click here to read Amy Davis Abdallah's new book Meaning in the Moment.
• Click here to find Shannon K. Evans on Instagram.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

Let me be set free by love, O God.

Let me be set free to love.

What if that's the thing? Settling into the reality of our lives, receiving it as it is. And being set free by love—the love of ourselves, the love of this season of our lives, the love of ones we're charged to care for, and the love of God?

Discerning the law of love in our hearts, and being set free by it.

Links:

• Click here to find Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayers.
• Click here to find The Celtic Way of Prayer.
• Find last week's Slow Practice here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

Are we paying close enough attention to look with the eyes of reverence, to make space in our imaginations for an image of God that stretches beyond our small experiences and into the "eternal current" of God at work in the world?

Links:

• Click here to find the article "The Feminine Way to Wisdom" by David Brooks.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.

Links:

• Find the full poem by Antonio Machado andTranslated by Robert Bly here.
• Find Radical Acceptance: Embracing your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Branch here.
• Find my instagram posts about the brain treatment Ace and I recieved here and here.
• This reflection and practice were also published this week in The Slow Way Newsletter.
• Find a transcript of this episode here.
• Find Micha's website and sign up for her weekly newsletter here
• Find Micha on Instagram
• Find Micha on Threads.
• Micha's other (award winning!) podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.

Preorder my new book Blessed Are The Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and available everywhere books are sold.